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Assassin's Creed is a good basic idea that was hyped up and then not delivered at all. All of the most fundamental aspects of the original concept were not executed. Specifically:

1) The combat sucks. The entire combat system breaks down to "hold the block button and press the counter-attack button at the right time." That's literally all you need for the entire game except the first mission (you don't get counters in that one mission).
2) The "social stealth" or "crowd-based stealth" does not exist. You cannot blend in with the crowd at all. That was the big feature the game was supposed to have, and it doesn't exist.
3) You cannot find out information about your targets, track their routes, stalk them through the city, and then pounce on them whenever and wherever you like. This was something they said you'd be able to do, and you can't do it. You have to run some stupid errands, then your target appears at a marked location on the map, you go there, the target's waiting for you, watch a cutscene, kill the guy, watch a cutscene, mission's over. There's no freedom to do the killing how you want to do it.
4) You can't just "go anywhere" in the world; huge portions of the world are blocked off until the last part of the game. That's acceptable, but the fact is that there isn't anything to do other than pick fights with guards. This isn't like GTA where you can do side missions and acquire property or customize your character or get new weapons. The world is completely barren.
5) The climbing system is boring. Most of climbing is just holding the stick up. There's no timing fancy acrobatic moves like Prince of Persia, it's pretty much all automatically handled. It's not a bad system, but you spend way too much time using it.

What the game has going for it is that the artwork, especially the animation, is superb. But it's essentially like a really well-wrapped present, except you open the present up and it's an empty box.